EDITORIAL; Unwarranted Immunity

Published: February 24, 2012

The Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday about an outrageous police raid on a 73-year-old woman's home in Los Angeles shows how unconvincing a legal conclusion can be when the opinion for the court does not reflect what happened in the case.

Augusta Millender sued the officers for violation of her constitutional rights. They forced open the door and damaged her home in searching for Jerry Ray Bowen, her former foster son, and a shotgun he fired in a dispute with his girlfriend. The police found neither. But the warrant permitted a fishing expedition for virtually any gun and any evidence of gang-related activity.

A Federal District Court ruled the search violated the Fourth Amendment because the warrant was excessively broad. It also found the officers were not immune from the lawsuit. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the ruling.

Writing for a six-justice majority in Messerschmidt v. Millender, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. rejected the suit against the officers, holding that such legal actions can be brought only if the police acted unreasonably. He puts Mr. Bowen at the story's center so that any evidence of gang-related activity was somehow related to the domestic violence charge. In coming up with this scenario, Chief Justice Roberts concluded that the police's reliance on the warrant entitled them to qualified immunity because that reliance was not ''objectively unreasonable.''

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a strong dissent, points out that ''the court reaches this result only by way of an unprecedented, post hoc reconstruction of the crime,'' ignoring the case's ''undisputed facts.'' This decision unjustly narrows constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and makes it exceedingly difficult for innocent victims to hold police accountable in the courts.